President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will introduce Türkiye’s new legal reform strategy document next month, Justice Minister Yılmaz Tunç said Thursday.
"We will also unveil the human rights action plan on Human Rights Day on Dec. 10," Tunç told reporters in the capital, Ankara, as he attended a groundbreaking ceremony for a new courthouse expected to be completed in the second half of 2027.
Türkiye has broadly increased the number of its courthouses since 2002, while its judiciary shifted to a three-tier system in 2016, according to the minister.
When announced, the document will be the fourth legal reform document. It is the latest judicial reform process the Erdoğan’s government launched in 2009. Tunç has said the document has been penned with input from the judiciary, bars, universities, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and civilians.
"We will be working hard to implement every goal in these plans one by one," Tunç said, which is likely to happen over the next four years.
The reforms are based on the rule of law and will deliver timely and predictable justice. It will provide "effortless" access to justice while reconfiguring corporate structures, the penal justice system and legal and administrative judicial procedures.
The reforms will increase the number of courts based on case volume while bolstering physical and technical capacity. It also includes developing a judicial assistant system integrated with technical capacity such as digitalization and artificial intelligence in law. This means judicial service contact points with personnel and digital infrastructure will be set up in districts without courthouses.
The reform foresees strengthened defense and simplified legal processes.
Other steps in the reform involve introducing new practices aligned with the compensatory justice mentality to improve the quality of Turkish justice. Namely, the newly-launched assistant judge and prosecutor system is being advanced and a Legal Professions Entrance Exam will be implemented. In-service and pre-professional education in law and specialization in justice will be developed.
Moreover, to ensure a more effective execution of court hearings, the system of expert witnesses will be enhanced while the guarantees of the right to trial within reasonable time will be increased. This means the number of judges, prosecutors and legal personnel will increase and alternative dispute solution methods will be developed.
Human rights plan
Tunç’s office is also close to finishing a draft of the Human Rights Action Plan, the first enforced in 2014 and the second in 2021.
Türkiye’s Human Rights Action Plan aims to strengthen rights protections, individual freedom and security, judicial independence, personal privacy, transparency and property rights, as well as protect vulnerable groups and enhance administrative and social awareness of human rights.
The package introduced in 2021 included new regulations on access to justice, tax crimes, children’s courts, expansion of the definition of the crime of violence against women and its punishment and that individuals will not be deprived of their freedom due to their expression of opinion.